The Hawaii Elections Commission is meeting this week to discuss problems with mail-in ballots in recent elections, and discuss an initiative to move to all by-mail elections in the state (this will require action by the legislature).

It’s hard to get details from this short news story, but one thing seems clear: the state needs to require local officials to notify voters when their ballots are invalidated due to missing or non-matching signatures.

Those provisions are in place in Oregon (Statutory reference 254.431 Special procedure for ballots challenged due to failure to sign return envelope or nonmatching signature; public record limitation), and Washington, and Colorado.

It may not have been endorsed yet as a “best practice” by an appropriate committee of election experts, but a follow up if the signature verification fails certainly is standard practice in the three states that conduct elections fully by mail.

The Early Voting Information Center

We are a non-partisan academic research center based at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Professor Paul Gronke and his team conduct research on early voting and election reform, predominantly in the United States. In addition to our scholarly research, we have worked on projects with the Pew Center on the States, the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the Center for American Progress and a number of state and local elections offices.

The Early Voting Information Center is proud to have co-hosted the inaugural Election Sciences, Reform, and Administration Conference in July of 2017. More information can be found on the conference website.

Professor Gronke's academic credentials--including his curriculum vita, courses taught, and other research papers--can be found at his personal Reed web page.